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Activities To Develop Pre-Writing & Fine Motor Skills In Toddlers

I am so excited today to feature Pranita from www.merogandmom.com! Pranita is a wonderful source of inspiration, and a truly beautiful woman and mother, inside and out! Please follow her on her social channels below so you can enjoy her wonderful ideas, tips, and general amazing-ness and then enjoy her post below on fantastic and easy to do activities to develop pre-writing and fine motor skills in toddlers!

can lead to lack of confidence, low self-esteem, slow in completing any given task, refusal in new fine motor tasks for lifetime, frustration with precise hand-eye coordination, avoidance of tasks in life, poor writing skills or avoidance of writing, etc.

Steps to start with pre-writing activities

1. Check out the hand dominance

2. Encouraging children in activities that involves grasping,

3. Involve kids into fine motor activities to improve strength in their hand and finger muscles,

4. Plan out some (tactile- touch and feel) sensory play

To develop fine motor skills in toddlers, we can ask our children to help in the kitchen, cutting veggies with child-safe scissors or fingers , stirring water or cake batter, pounding dry fruits, using an egg beater, peeling oranges eggs or shelling peas, opening water bottles, use spray bottles, etc. to build strength in hand-wrist-finger muscles and master hand-eye coordination.

List of activities that can help to improve writing readiness (pre-writing) skills

P L A Y D O U G H
Playing with Playdough like making balls, rolling them, making objects etc. in early age gives strength in hand and finger muscles.

L A C I N G and W E A V I N G
you can buy lace cards or make your own (DIY lacing cards) and let your child use pincer grip to practise lacing(as it’s a great fine motor activity for toddlers).

After your child is able to easily thread the smallest beads on the rigid cord, replace the rigid cord with a floppy shoe lace or string. This floppy lace will provide your child with a “moving target” as he tries to thread the bead with his dominant hand and steady the cord with his non-dominant hand.

W R I T I N G with F I N G E R
Using a tray full of rice or any flour you can ask your child to write with his/her finger to trace letters or draw any design.

P E G S
Using clothpins or Pegs to practice fine motor skills. It helps in strengthening the finger muscles as these clips are really difficult to open . You can use these pins for counting activity or word making, phonics practicing activities etc.

C R A Y O N S | M A R K E R S | P A I N T S
Giving kids friendly and large grip crayons or markers or color pens to kids for practice purpose to boost confidence in them for writing.

T O N G S
Giving kids tongs to transfer balls or other small things from on basket to another helps them to practise fine motor skills which works as a prewriting skills to improve strength in hands.

If these fine motor activities are practiced regularly for one or two weeks, you can see huge improvement of strength in your child’s hands. Which helps in building/boosting confidence in them.
hand-eye coordination and to enhance finger muscle strength in toddlers !

P.S. : There are different grip styles you can observe in children as they develop fine motor skills, Fist grip, Four-finger grip, Pincer grip and tripod grip (which is specially used for writing purpose).

The proper way to hold a pencil is called the tripod grip. The tripod grip is the best way to use hand muscles when writing. The child holds the pencil with their thumb and index finger, while the pencil rests on their middle finger.

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Robin Lloyd

Robin Lloyd is a Jesus lover, future Dr's wife, twin mama with another little one on the way, animal lover, pianist, teacher, coffee addict, and blogger who delights in pouring her creative energy into photos and posts. She spends her time loving on her kids, dreaming of new creative content, and supporting her busy hubby!
Robin graduated with a BM in piano performance from Lamont at University of Denver (where she met her husband!), and now resides in Colorado.
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